This is the 80s super robot show that earns its wait. Seventeen episodes of Earth getting systematically demolished before the team even transforms, which means when Dancouga finally arrives, it doesn't feel like a solution, it feels like the last desperate gamble of a species that's already lost everything else. The animation holds up because the fights are actually built around what the mecha can do, not what looks expensive. Ryo's arc from soldier to something unhinged by necessity drives the whole thing forward. You watch a planet die in slow motion, then watch four people try to reverse that with a giant robot and pure refusal to quit.

Emperor Muge's Empire of Death sets its sights on Earth as its next conquest, and army after army falls before its seemingly unstoppable robots. The threat grows worse when Shapiro Keats, a power-hungry Earthling turned traitor, becomes an informer for the Empire. From a laboratory concealed deep within a lake in Japan comes a new weapon: four beast-shaped mecha, the Eagle Fighter, Land Cougar, Land Liger and the mammoth Big Moth, which combine into the giant robot Dancouga. Ace pilot Shinobu, Shapiro's former girlfriend Sara, Masato and the unlikely young hero Ryo make up the Cyber Beast Force that takes the fight to the invaders in this mecha action series.